Starting system change on a budget

Welcome to the Forum, fellow Nigel. It’s really not a good idea adding a Naim power amp to another company’s preamp, as the pre defines the operation of the power and the two are designed to go together. 

Your immediate issue seems to be boomy bass. Changing your amplifier probably won’t help. Boomy bass is down to the interation between your speakers and your room. Are the speakers too big for the room? Have you tried various positions for them? If they are rear ported they need to be well away from the back wall and the corners. Perhaps you could give a description of  how you have everything set up. It may be that you will need to change your speakers if you cannot deal with the boom in your room with your existing electronics. I don’t know the Kandy boxes but they were well reviewed and look pretty good.

That Kandy looks to be a pretty good amp, I'd tend to look to the speakers for the source of the uncontrolled bass, have you any leeway to move them around? Repositioning might be enough, if you want a systematic guide do a search for "Sumiko Masterset". With your taste in music you need speakers that do scale well, not all are equal to it so if the Tannoys are doing that I'd try really hard to get them to work with your room. If that fails and the bass is still overblown than you can attack the problem with an amp upgrade or speakers. The Kandy has a nice low output impedence from it's pre section so will probably drive a Naim amps relatively low input impedence but a Naim pre contains a low pass filter to limit the bandwidth the power amp is exposed to in order to prevent instability, the Roksan doesn't have that filter. On the other hand when I was changing from Rega pre/power to Naim I spoke to a Naim guy (might even have been Jason Gould) at a launch do they put on for the superline at my local dealership who thought changing the power amp first wouldnt be a problem. As it happened I changed the pre to a 282 as one came in lightly used at a decent price at the right time so I never got to test an unfiltered pre into a 250. If the speakers are just too much for the room or not well placed changing the amp won't help much but if they just need more control of the bass it might.

Do you get uncontrolled bass from both the turntable and the CD player, or just the turntable? If the latter, it may be due to the placement of your turntable (if not on a wall shelf or other effective decoupling it will typically pick up vibrations leading to acoustic feedback). If you get uncontrolled bass from both the turntable and the CD player it's probably down to room acoustics. Perhaps the speakers are too close to the wall, perhaps even in a corner? Have you tried moving them? I'm not familiar with your amp and speakers from personal experience, but I very much doubt that either is the source of the problem.

Many thanks for the replies.

I have the speakers at one end of a fairly long room around 10x3 m. I have played with the placement and currently have the speakers around 40cm from both walls in the corner of the room and just over 2 m apart. Maybe uncontrolled was the wrong word - I think that the bass lacks definition and clarity. Drums in orchestral and pop music are fine but the lower strings sound sludgy when there are any long periods of louder music. A different issue is that the music is quite tiring when it is continuously at a higher dynamic. I find it a bit unatural at loud dynamics as certain frequencies seem to be accentuated over others. I had hoped that more competent amplification might help reproduce frequencies more accurately but that might be my misinterpretation of the equipment?

Most of my music is on CD and it is here rather than the turntable that I notice the lower frequencies being less focused.

You have a tough acoustic space to work with - a room that is long and thin.  I can't imagine you'd get the best performance anywhere past the halfway mark of the room due to reflections.  If you treat it as a 3mX3M room and listen nearfield you will probably get the most out of it acoustics wise.  That would mean looking at speakers with less bass output, perhaps sealed boxes like the spendor s3/5rs.  Dynamics will take a hit, there will be less bass (but as you've discovered, sometimes less is more) and there will be less ultimate loudness.  And despite these shortcomings it will sound better overall. 

Before you change any components of your HiFi, I think it’s important to optimise what you have now. In particular, room layout and speaker positioning. For example, you say your speakers are 40cm from both side and rear walls. In general, it’s better if they are not equidistant from both walls. If you do a google search for ‘Cardas room’ you’ll find some useful information on this. Treat it as just a starting point, and be prepared to experiment. 

In the posts before this one, the advice is given to experiment. Its a most important advice, and it's fun in my opinion. Shift the speakers to a different position, listen for a few weeks, then change etc ...

You have not mentioned the loudspeakercable you are using. I have various in my house, and I replaced over the last weekend my trusty old cheap Linn K20 by Naim's Nac A5 and guess what? Much better bass definition. Its not the first time I've heard this change. Maybe this is something for you to think about too.

I have a project debut carbon deck, and I was not really happy with it until I paired it with Naims Olive line. These are older amps, and are working perfect with vinyl. If vinyl is your thing, consider a Naim Nac 72 pre-amp with a Naim Nap 140/180. It costs you between 700 and 1000 gbp for good versions. Later, when funds allow, you can add a Hicap or even a bigger amp like the Nap 250 which is all you ever need regarding power.

Regarding the dimensions of your room, I have a 10Mx4.25 room and bay windows which makes it about 45 m2. Length is in the end fantastic since it can work out really nice.

Much good advice so far, I would add that some corner bass traps would be a great idea along with some first reflection panels...

The good news is many acoustic panels are relatively inexpensive but can make a huge difference to the listening experience 

The normal advice here is to fire the speakers across the room, this will get them out of the corners but 3m doesn’t give you much leeway to bring them out into the room without having them too close or in the way and that assumes you have the option.

Your comment of confused bass during forte passages might indicate the amp is running out of reserves in which case a Naim amp might help but the one you want is a 250 for its regulated power supply but the unregulated 180 might be enough, bit of a punt if you can’t try before you buy.

Given you musical tastes and corner placement of the speakers Audio note speakers might be an idea, they’re designed for corners and do scale reaaly well.